THIRU

THIRU 1.0 WYSWYG DOS editor in Romanized Tamil. 41398 bytes

PURPOSE: Use this program to create, edit and print texts in Tamil script. The tamil words are entered in the Romanized Tamil convention. By Romanized Tamil, one means Tamil typed in Roman script as it sounds. The files can be up to 65472 characters long.

You can print the selected text or the whole file on an EPSON(c) dot matrix printer or on a HP(c) Laser printer connected to your LPT1 port. This program is fully stand alone under MSDOS. The whole software including this userguide is in one file called THIRU.EXE.

ROMANIZED TAMIL: Basically one types Tamil in Roman script as it sounds. English does not use the Roman script in a strict phonetic manner. Use the most common pronunciation as far as possible.

The tamil vowels are:- a, aa(A), i, ee (ii, I), u, oo (uu, U), e, E, ai, o, O, ow (au). The consonents are:- k(g,h), n(NG,ng), c(ch), n(NY), t(d), N, th(dh), n(nN,n^), p(b), m, y, r, l, v, zh(z), L, R, n(Nn), sh, @s, S, H, j, x(ksh), @Om. The symbols shown inside brackets are alternatives.

This software automatically takes care of the minor variations in the three commonly used romanized tamil conventions. For example: naan, n^aan, nNaan are acceptable. ingE, iNGgE, inggE are acceptable. It will tolerate onru for onRu, irukkiradhu for irukkiRadhu, tharkam for tharkkam, paarpadhu for paarppadhu etc.

Watch out the use of h, H, s and S. The lower case is used for more common usage and the upper case for the rarer occurance, namely the Grantham symbols You may need to globally replace lower case s and h by uppercase S and H if you have used them to represent Grantham alphabets.

In thamizh the harder sounds k, t, th, t, p do not occur in the middle of words, unless they are preceded by r or doubled. Use g or h, d, dh, b in such places, just like you would read it. i.e. Use paahu or paagu (liquid sugar) and not paaku. The latter will be confused with paakku (betel nut).

The program is very fault tolerant. But do not expect valai palam to correctly appear in Tamil to mean vaazhaip pazham. Use L, N for the pallatal consonents, R for the hard r, zh for the thamizh.

In classical Tamil, there are sometimes free standing vowels inside a word. To enter those, preceed them with a _. The _ will be treated as a zero width space character. You can use this trick to fool the built in phonetic rules if needed. Try venkat_raaman, maant_riyaal, vetri, vet_ri, than_oon

BILINGUAL TEXTS: You can mix Roman and Tamil text. The default is Tamil text. The roman portion (not to be transliterated) should start with one of the following words \et, \roman, \(ROMAN). The romanized Tamil portion should start with \bt, \tamil, or \(TAMIL). When entering Roman words for search string use \et and \bt. Just type a \ and the rest will appear automatically.

EDITOR USAGE: will give a few screens of on-line help in Tamil. You will find the transliteration rules and editor usage.

Use the arrow keys and PgUp, PgDn to move the cursor. Press once to move to beginning of line, twice to move to start of paragraph, and thrice to get to beginning of document. Press once to move to end of line, twice to move to end of paragraph and thrice to move to end of document. will move cursor to the next occurrance of the same character. Use to to move to next word, next sentence etc.

Use to start a selection. Then move cursor.Selection will be highlighted. Press again to copy the selection to clip buffer. Press to delete the selection to clip buffer. Press to insert the contents of clip buffer.

To print only a few lines on printer (HPLaser/Epson Dot matrix) in Tamil, select text to be printed as above and press . To print the whole text in Tamil, select nothing and print .

To search for a word or string, press . Use to continue search. Use to replace the string with another string. Use to delete searched string. Use to quit the search anytime.

Use to close this file and switch to another file. Note that you can cut or copy text from one file and paste it another file. Use this procedure to move parts of text from one file to another

Use to save the file to disk. Use to cancel most actions and to exit the editor. Note that, if the file was modified and not saved, warning message to save will appear. Other wise no message will appear. Also if there is already a file with the same name, there will be warning before erasing old contents. The file name will be checked for validity and you can not create DOS invalid filenames.

HISTORY: I have produced this editor for motivating volunteers to bring classical Tamil texts and music compositions into the electronic domain. Please let me know what texts you are typing, to avoid duplication. It is your responsibility to make sure that there are no copyright violations. ThirukkuraL and the 4000 verses of all the Azhvaars have been completed.

HOW MUCH DOES THIS COST:

It is absolutely free for the following people: (i) those who have typed up or intend typing up Tamil texts and release them free in the electronic public domain. (ii) non-profit charitable, literary and religious organizations.

You may use this software for commercial purposes. But do inform the author. This program was prepared entirely by me. I spent more than 300 hours of evenings and weekends of personal time.

Usage: THIRU A new file can be started this way. The graphic card will be assumed to be HGA, if mono chrome and VGA if color. If you have SVGA, it is better to specify it as shown the next line

Usage: THIRU File_name EGA/VGA/... [O] [c1 c2 cw1 cw2 cw3] Items within square brackets are optional. Do not type the ] and [

O - Display old style lai, Lai, nai, Nai, Naa etc. c1 and c2 are character colors (0-15) cw1 cw2 and cw3 are window background colors (0-15)

File_name - Text file to edit

Type: THIRU /help to print detailed instructions on your screen Type: THIRU /help P to print these instructions on your PRN port printer.

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The software is available at the following ftp sites. SimTel & its
mirrors. site (internet_number) directory ftp_mode
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oak.oakland.edu (141.210.10.117) /simtel/msdos/txtutl binary
wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.136.4) /systems/ibmpc/msdos/txtutl binary
archive.orst.edu (128.193.2.13) /pub/mirrors/simtel/msdos/txtutl
ftp.uu.net (192.48.96.9) find out from the site ftp.funet.fi
(128.214.6.100) Finland ,, src.doc.ic.ac.uk (146.169.2.1) UK ftp.switch.ch
(130.59.1.40) Switzerland archie.au (139.130.4.6) Australia
nctuccca.edu.tw (140.111.1.10) Taiwan ftp.technion.ac.il (132.68.1.10)
Italy 

Please use the site closest to you.

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